So Close And No Closer
Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Rue didn't need a man in her life. She didn't want one, either. The past had taught her only too well the chaos that love could bring. She was happy enough, building her small dried-flower business and learning to enjoy life on her own. Neil Saxton, however, seemed determined to break down all her defences. Neil made it clear that he wouldn't take no for an answer when he offered to buy her land.But somehow, Rue got the distinct feeling that it was more than her property he was after…
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Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author
PENNY JORDAN
Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!
Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.
This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.
About the Author
PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.
Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.
Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
CHAPTER ONE
RUE knew she had a visitor long before the old-fashioned bell-pull clanged in the small front porch. Horatio had started rumbling deep in his throat the moment the car pulled up outside. It would probably be Jane Roselle coming to collect the delphiniums she had promised to have ready for her. If so, she was going to have to wait for half an hour, because she was early, and Rue hadn’t quite finished tying up the bunches.
Five years ago, when she had first started growing and drying her own flowers and herbs, she had had no idea how quickly her small business would escalate, or the pleasure it would give her, but then, five years ago she had not thought it possible that life could hold pleasure for her ever again. She had been wrong, though. Perhaps her enjoyment was not the kind a young woman in her mid-twenties would normally expect, because it did not encompass any of the things that the rest of the world might consider necessary for happiness. There was no man in her life, for instance—no lover or husband to share her small pleasures and pains. She had no children, no family of any sort, barring Horatio.
But she was content in her aloneness, preferring it, even welcoming it for its security.
The bell clanged again, more impatiently, and Horatio’s growl deepened.
Rue deftly tied another bundle of the tall dried flowers and then hurried across the stone-flagged floor of the drying shed to wash her hands in the old-fashioned stone sink in the corner.
Her home, Vine Cottage, had once been part of a much larger estate. Vine Cottage itself had housed the estate gardener and, because of this, attached to it was a large assortment of outbuildings, including the comfortably sized drying shed with its old-fashioned heavy beams so ideal for hanging her flowers from. Next door to it was a small two-storey stable with a boarded loft and thick stone walls that kept dry in the wettest of weathers.
From the doorway in the upper storey, which had once been used, with the help of its small hoist, to store animal feed for the winter, it was possible to see as far as the big house itself and the hills beyond, as well as to look over her own ten-acre field, which was now, as they approached the end of summer, a glorious mass of rank upon rank of rich colour as her flowers bloomed.
She was just approaching the most critical period of her busy year. A dry late summer and early autumn meant that she could pick her flowers at their peak. Wet, windy weather destroyed the fragile blooms and could mean a whole season’s work going to waste.
Horatio whined at the door as she walked towards it. He was a dog of large size and indeterminate breed. She had found him abandoned half a mile outside the village three winters ago and, having been unable to trace his owners, had adopted him, or rather he had adopted her, she admitted ruefully as he followed her into the house.
